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Comment by c2 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, people have been predicting both sides of the coin for a while. People predicting success on hacker news tend to get upvoted, and people predicting failure tend to be downvoted, regardless of the reality of the situation.

Right now Apple is doing great. I would still question the sustainability of this business as an investor. What's next after ipad?

Long term, 5 years say, ipad/iphone margins will evaporate and Apple will need a series of "big things" to fill in the gaps to even have a flat growth curve to justify their market cap - that's my prediction.

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Why would margins evaporate? Tech gets cheaper every year, but Apple keeps the same price points. They're the 800lb gorilla, and can get better pricing than competitors because of their volume.

They grew the market for smartphones and tablets, and they'll probably continue to do so. It's still a long way to smartphone and tablet saturation.

What's next after ipad?

Who knows, but I’ve learned not to bet against Apple too often. Who would have foreseen the popularity and success of the iPad just a couple of years ago? The iPhone is barely four years old and has dramatically changed the industry as well.

And if any company has a track record over the past decade of delivering "big things" it's Apple. No company in recent history comes even close. Can they? Who knows, but if anyone can, it's Apple.

One decade is great. Plenty of companies have had their one decade in the sun - Microsoft, Cisco, IBM... Standard Oil.

I think your comment is a bit of hyperbole, the success of a company like Apple is not unprecedented in history. Apple could continue doing "big things" over the next decade, I just seriously doubt their ability to continue their growth and justify their market cap over the next 5-10 years. That's all. Possible, yes, in my opinion extremely, extremely unlikely.

And also like clockwork, I had a comment explaining why I thought they would fail, and have downvotes.

Take Microsoft: they are making most of the money off the same two products for decades—OS and Office. Now take apple: 47% of they revenue is from product which was introduced four years ago (iPhone). 21%(!) comes from product which was released merely a year ago—iPad.

Apple is not afraid to kill its cash cow if they think they have a better product in line—see how they dealt with iPod line before the iPhone—they were replacing the most popular model with something new.

I have no doubt Jobs has a vision many years into the future. It was amazing to watch his 1997 WWDC keynote and realize that now we see the fruits of his thoughts then.

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